South Carolina Senate passes six-week abortion ban

South Carolina’s senate passed a six-week pregnancy ban on abortion after a filibuster led by five female senators, including three Republicans, failed to block it. The bill will drastically reduce access to abortion in a state that has become an unexpected destination for women seeking the procedure, as nearly every other Southern state is moving toward prohibition.

The legislation now goes to Governor Henry McMaster, a Republican who has said he will sign it. The ban will almost certainly be challenged by abortion rights advocates in court, where it would test a ruling by the state’s Supreme Court in January that overturned an earlier six-week ban and found an abortion right in the state constitution.

The legislation had exposed divisions among Republicans over how far to go in restricting abortion, a battle that has played out in other lawmakers in the year since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade and returned abortion regulation to the states .

The women filibustering and calling themselves the “Sister Senators” argued that the bill creates so many hurdles that almost no one in South Carolina would be able to get an abortion. Because a pregnancy is believed to begin on the first day of a woman’s last menstrual period, six weeks is about two weeks after she misses a period before many women know they are pregnant.

The bill requires any woman seeking an abortion to first undergo two in-person doctor visits and two ultrasounds. Senator Katrina Shealy, one of the Republican women who opposed the six-week ban, said Tuesday: “We are not God. We have to let people make their own decisions.”

The governor had convened a rare special session of the legislature to try to pass a ban, trying to resolve a deadlock between the House and Senate.

While both chambers are controlled by Republicans, the House is more conservative and had pushed three times to get the Senate to pass a bill that would ban nearly all abortions from conception. Three times the women in the Senate and three Republican male colleagues succeeded in successfully filibustering. The Republican women pleaded instead for a 12-week ban, or for the question to be put to voters via ballot.

Two of the Republican women had agreed to a six-week ban as a compromise, with exceptions for medical emergencies, fatal fetal diagnoses, and cases of rape and incest. The Senate passed that bill, but because the House had added amendments, it had to vote again.

The women had warned their colleagues in the House of Representatives not to change the bill: “Don’t move a semicolon,” said Senator Sandy Senn, a Republican. Instead, the House added amendments that the women said would effectively ban all abortions.

The amendments included requirements for the doctor’s visits and ultrasounds, and removed a provision that would have given minors up to 12 weeks to have an abortion or seek a waiver from a judge if they were unable to obtain parental consent. Opponents of the bill noted that the state’s three abortion clinics currently had to wait two or three weeks for an appointment, and that adding requirements for more visits would mean no one could get a legal abortion.

The House version also added factual statements that the state Supreme Court had criticized when it struck down the previous six-week ban. Heart activity, which can be noticed around six weeks, is said to be a “key indicator” that a fetus will result in a live birth. Another says the state has a “compelling interest from the beginning of a woman’s pregnancy in protecting the woman’s health and the life of the unborn child”.

The filibustering legislators argued that this could be seen as a statement that a fetus is a person, opening the door to a ban on conception.

The bill also allows the state Board of Medical Examiners to revoke the medical license of any physician who violates the law, and allows anyone to file a complaint. Parents of a minor can bring a civil action against a doctor who performed an abortion.

Republican leaders in the legislature were eager to pass a ban that could challenge the state Supreme Court’s decision starting in January. The judge who wrote that decision was the only woman on the bench, and she made ample reference to expanding rights for women since Roe was ruled in 1973.

But she retired soon after and was replaced by a man, making South Carolina the only state with an all-male Supreme Court Justice.

Republicans, including the women who tried to filibuster the law, were concerned about the rising number of abortions in the state since other Southern states enacted bans. About half of all abortions in recent months have involved residents of other states, according to state health officials.

In the days leading up to the debate, Senate Majority Leader Shane Massey declared that South Carolina had become “the abortion capital of the Southeast.”

“The pro-life members of the Senate find this unacceptable,” he said.